After Christine O’Donnell’s “surprise” victory in the Primaries this week, Rove had this to say:

“It does conservatives little good to support candidates who at the end of the day while they may be conservative in their public statements do not event the characteristics of rectitude, truthfulness and sincerity and character that the voters are looking for… I mean, there were a lot of nutty things she has been saying that just simply don't add up... I'm for the Republican, but I got to tell you, we were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We are now looking at seven to eight in my opinion. This is not a race we're going to be able to win.”

Pragmatic, strategic, analytical. These were all strengths for Karl Rove. Now, thanks to Tea Party fever, they’ve become severe liabilities. If you need any indication of just how divided the Republican party is at this point in time you need only to read the following comments from some of the Right Wing's craziest, most craven commentators:

Michelle Malkin: “Rove came across as an effete sore loser instead of the supposedly brilliant and grounded GOP strategists that he’s supposed to be. Expect more Washington Republicans to start sounding like Tea Party-bashing libs as their entrenched incumbent friends go down.”

Machelle Malkin Part Deux: “The conservative base is in full-scale revolt. This is a good and healthy thing. Close political observers of and on the Right know that the revolt against Big Government/Open-Borders Rove/Bush-ism has been brewing a long time…”

Really? A long time? You mean since they left the White House? Rove was practically the patron saint of Conservatism only two years ago. Now that he no longer serves the Corporate interests of folks like the Koch family (the ostensible creators of the Tea Party movement, and about the least "Populist" clan you can possibly imagine) and Rupert Murdoch he's apparently meat for the the beast.

“This was stunning! I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Rove cranked up a one man smear campaign on live TV…”

“He’s went so dirty and combative .. I’m still reeling.”

Hey Karl, wake up and smell the Patriots! We're having a Revolution on November 2nd! And if the Voting Booth doesn't work, we'll go the old fashioned way.”

See what I mean? Revealing and disturbing. I empathize with the anger that many people in the “Tea Party” are feeling toward “the Establishment.” That anger is, frankly, well-founded. We’re in the midst of an economic recession that’s cost many, many people their jobs, their homes, and their feeling of overall safety. Our government is largely geared toward serving Corporatist interests over and above the interests of The People. Our elected representatives have consistently sold out their constituents for a piece of the Wall St. pie.

All of these are reasons to be legitimately furious.

And yet, the cognitive dissonance on display here is staggering. The notion that Republicans could be stunned by Rove playing perceived “dirty tricks” tells me that the people making these comments willfully ignored the countless instances during Bush’s administration in which Rove did just that. The fact that the economic difficulties we’re now facing as a country can be laid in large, undeniable part at the feet of a Republican administration who spent trillions of dollars on a war that was obviously, blatantly, desired and so poorly justified as to have been laughable – not simply in “hindsight,” as many of our spineless Media spokesheads are so fond of claiming in an effort to extricate themselves from deserved culpability, but at the time of its inception – seems not to occur to these people at all.

Where were they when billions of dollars in US currency was being lifted on pallets into Iraq, and then “stolen”? Or when the American military was being ignored in favor of private Military subcontractors with no obligation to follow long-standing and honorable codes of combat and conduct? Where were they when Rove and his slimy compatriots were working overtime to baselessly smear John Kerry in the 2004 election? Where were they when New Orleans was left to fend for itself, post-Katrina? Where were they when the crackdown on Civil Liberties – a crackdown that included the denial of entry into public Presidential speeches and the unconstitutional monitoring of communications, to name just two – that they now (in theory) decry was in full swing, was in the implementation phase, was in a “possible to be stopped” phase? Where were they when the financial bailouts they now rail against were being railroaded through Congress by the President they elected and the strategist that served him?

Why, they were cheering for Karl Rove of course. They were a-wavin’ their flags and shouting down all dissent as “un-American.” Remember that? Remember when criticism of Presidential policy was tantamount to treason for these folks? Because they sure don’t.

These days it’s all “we have the right – nay the duty – to fight against injustice!” When their Fellow Americans were suffering, were confused and angry by their own government’s willful, mocking refusal to listen, they were content to tell those people to shut up. But now that they’re suffering the ill-effects of their own misguided “Patriotism,” and now that a black man has entered the White House, it’s apparently time to burn everything down.

Then there's the fact that this "Populist uprising" is funded by anti-Government billionaires (the Kochs, the very "elites" these Tea Party folks claim to hate) and promoted with vicious regularity by Fox News - a multinational corporation whose business interests align nicely with all of this craziness.

Neither of these groups has the interests of "the little guy" at heart. They are gleefully, openly exploiting the base fears and anger of a population that has reason for their anger.

1 comment:

Wonderful observations. This is exactly why I can't take the Tea Party seriously. You can't talk about freedom when your poster children are preaching about imposing their faith-based morality on the rest of us. You can't talk about fiscal conservatism now when you sat there quietly during 8 years of outrageous fiscal irresponsibility. I'm certainly not in favor of the excessive spending with no obvious benefit that has occurred under President Obama, but I'll take excessive spending on domestic policies over excessive spending on pointless foreign wars any day of the week. I would love nothing more than to see a credible third party rise up to challenge the Reds and the Blues, but the Tea Party ain't it.

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